Eb sledge biography of abraham

Eugene B. Inside the state, he also was a professor of biology popular with students at the University of Montevallo , where he taught for many years. Sledge's father was a physician with undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Sledge grew up in Georgia Cottage, an antebellum house on the outskirts of Mobile that once had been owned by nineteenth-century novelist Augusta Jane Evans.

As a boy, Sledge spent many hours exploring Mobile Bay waterways observing nature his father taught him to describe birds , animals, and features of the landscape—training that came in handy in his career as a biologist and looking for Civil War relics.

Author EB Sledge chronicled his World War II Marine infantry combat experiences in compelling and emotional detail in the acclaimed With the Old Breed.

Two of Sledge's ancestors on his mother's side served as officers in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, and Sledge maintained a lifelong interest in that conflict. He then enlisted in the U. Marine Corps at Marion in December After a brief stint at the Georgia Institute of Technology in an officers' training program in , he left the program to serve in the ranks as an enlisted man.

After additional training in New Caledonia and on Pavuvu in the Solomon Islands, Sledge saw heavy combat for the first time on the island of Peleliu in September The physical and emotional experience marked him for life. After rest and rehabilitation on Pavuvu and maneuvers on Guadalcanal and Ulithi, Sledge's unit went into combat again on Okinawa on April 1, The battle for Okinawa was the costliest single campaign of the Pacific War: in almost three months of fighting, more than 50, U.

Sledge, known as "Sledgehammer" to his comrades, was in combat on Okinawa for 82 days, until the island was declared secured on June 23, Despite the heavy casualties in his unit, he survived the war without being physically wounded. It took him years, however, to recover from the psychological aftereffects of combat.